melissaahowells - Peace Where There Is No Opportunity

it took a long while
but the urge to call her finally went away

I'm left with something
less satisfying
the anxiety
the feeling of being scooped out
was preferable
to the dull ache
to the hole where my heart
used to be

grief
can have no expiration date
you risk a lot
being thought of as
maudlin
depressive
self-involved

there are no maps
there are not directions
there is no starting point
nor a destination
in the winding journey
through the looming grey horizons
of suffocating grief

I think of it as
the year of living dangerously
dominoes stacked up ready to fall on top
of one another at an accelerating pace
and me unable to stop the tumbling

there is no grave to blubber at
there is no urn to turn in my hands
there is a box of sterling trinkets that she wore
that are tarnishing
there is a sketchbook full of nature
which represent the artist she was but never became

I am angry with her still
she tripped me up
with her meanness and stubbornness
in the end
and complicated my life with guilt
that buries me while I sleep

I have been carrying her leaden cross
around me neck
the wooden planks have stooped me over
and I walk with a limp
the same one she had before she died

when I speak I sound like her
when I'm in the sun I freckle like her
my hair is a coiled raven's nest
like hers
only my eyes and stubborn chin differ
they are my Father's
the man she married and grew to un-love

do not stay too long in grief
it is a desolate place
with hard repetitive lessons

I want to love her
but I do not know the way
she wouldn't let me
she only wanted me a certain way
and I always had to guess
guessing too is desolation
and dangerous

it leads to a place of charades
and pleasing others
when I ought to have been living my life
all along to live and love myself

how I wish we could have been different

legal copyright for this poem 12:57pm 8/14/2019 time/date stamped
and also for this legally copyrighted site title
Meloo Straight From Her Tilt-a-World
and also for this Poet/Author/Writer Melissa A. Howells

make peace before you no longer have the opportunity